Hip to QR Codes

Since the start of the year I’ve been beating the drum pretty hard for sponsors and causes to utilize QR codes in their cause marketing campaigns. Read previous posts on the topic here, here, here and here.

QR codes are like barcodes, only because they’re in 2D they can hold much more data. You can use QR codes to launch a website or Facebook, display augmented reality, launch a picture or a video, plus many other tactical variations.

Here’s tactical implementation that I just proposed to a prospective client that has a physical storefront: put a QR code on a vinyl cling on the clients windows and doors that would launch a sweepstakes entry form.

Since basically every smartphone with a camera can read QR codes… and their expense is relatively low…adding them to all your cause marketing collateral makes a lot of sense.

The QR code at the left is for me and my company, Alden Keene & Associates, Inc.

Point your smartphone at it and it will launch a profile page on a new website called Hipscan. (When Hipscan followed me on Twitter, my first thought was hip as in the place where your femur connects with your pelvis, not in the sense of being in the know about the latest and greatest things. Shows you how hip I am.) In turn, my brand-spanking-new Hipscan page connects you to my Twitter, my LinkedIn profile and this blog, but not my Facebook page.

All of this is free. Hipscan makes money by selling labels, business cards, T-shirts and the like with your QR code.